Convictions, sentences affirmed for men who robbed deli in Greenwich Twp.

Sentences for two men convicted of armed robbery will not be reduced but their records will need to be adjusted under a ruling by the Appellate Division of the State Superior Court.

On July 11, 2011, George Lane, now 38, and Toby Wellington, now 37, were found guilty after a jury trial of second-degree conspiracy to commit armed robbery; first-degree armed robbery, and second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.

Both were sentenced to 12 years in prison on the robbery convictions and were required to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for parole. They were also sentenced to concurrent five-year terms on the conspiracy and weapons convictions.

They appealed. On Feb. 27, the appellate judges issued a ruling upholding the convictions and the sentences but remanding the matter back to the lower court to correct the judgments of conviction.

According to the appellate court opinion:

On Nov. 4, 2009, Jignesh Patel was working in the Greenwich Township delicatessen he owned. At approximately 12:30 p.m., Jignesh and his brother, Manny Patel, were making sandwiches for some customers, when a man walked into the deli and stood by the register.

Jignesh went to attend to the customer and asked if he could help him. The man told Jignesh to open the drawer of the cash register. When Jignesh asked the man to repeat the statement, the man displayed a wood-handled gun and again told Jignesh to open the drawer of the register. For emphasis, the gunman told Jignesh, “I’m not kidding,” as he displayed the gun. When Jignesh opened the cash register, the gunman reached over the counter, grabbed cash out of the drawer, and ran out of the deli.

Sgt. David Voll of the Greenwich Township Police Department happened to be in the deli and saw a vehicle, which he believed to be a Pontiac with a Pennsylvania license plate, traveling fast through the parking lot.

Trooper Susan Stafford-Mistretta of the New Jersey State Police saw the suspect vehicle and followed it into Easton, Pa. After a brief chase, the Pontiac stopped and the driver and a passenger, later identified as Wellington and Lane, respectively, got out and ran.

Other State Police troopers joined in the search along with Easton police and both men were soon apprehended.

On appeal, Wellington and Lane argued several points including prosecutorial misconduct, improper jury instructions and more. Both argued that they should get a new trial because some charges should have been merged with the robbery charge.

Lane argued that the police searched the Pontiac before they obtained a warrant and, therefore, the fruits of that search must be suppressed. Wellington claimed that he had an expectation of privacy in operating the Pontiac because it belonged to his girlfriend’s mother and the court improperly concluded that the vehicle had been stolen.

Jignesh Patel testified before the grand jury that the police had shown him a photograph of a sweatshirt on the day of the robbery and he recognized it as the sweatshirt that the man who robbed him had been wearing. Based on this testimony, the court accepted the defendants’ claim that the police searched the Pontiac before obtaining a warrant. However, it held that the warrantless search was proper because defendants had no reasonable expectation of privacy in an automobile they knew, or should have known, to have been stolen

“The license plate did not belong to the vehicle, and neither the license plate nor the car was registered to defendant or the co-defendant,” the judged wrote. “The case law is clear on this issue, and the Court finds that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy. The search was justified even without a warrant as Fourth Amendment protections were not implicated. Thus even if the sweatshirt was obtained before the warrant was signed, the officers were within the corners of the law in obtaining the evidence.”

Lane and Wellington fled, leaving the car unattended in the middle of a street, and neither one owned the vehicle. Therefore neither man “had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the vehicle or its contents, including the sweatshirt, because they had abandoned it,” the judges wrote.

The judges found that certain comments by the prosecutor “skirted the line of propriety” but were “not clearly capable of producing an unjust result,” the judges wrote.

As for the argument that the court erred in not merging weapons and conspiracy convictions into the armed robbery conviction: “The State concedes that the conspiracy and weapons convictions should have merged with the armed robbery convictions. Therefore, we remand both judgments of conviction to be amended to reflect that merger,” the judges wrote.

As for the claim the sentence was excessive, the judges wrote that the sentencing range for a first-degree offense is between 10 and 20 years. The men’s sentences are at the lower end of the permissible range, despite the fact that both had prior criminal records and were deemed likely to offend again.

“We are satisfied that neither sentence was manifestly excessive. The convictions of both defendants are affirmed,” the judges wrote.

Lane is currently serving his time at East Jersey State Prison and Wellington is at South Woods State Prison.